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Small Group Ministry Session Plan Intersections of Economic and Reproductive Justice

Opening Words:

We tend to treat changes in the economy as if they were like the weather—natural phenomena governed by forces beyond our control. Nothing could be further from the truth. We have chosen to live in a society with high unemployment and with income distribution that is becoming medieval. A tiny percentage of Americans owns most of the wealth. Meanwhile millions of willing and able people are without work. This did not just happen. We created this situation.

—Unitarian Universalist Association President Rev. Peter Morales

Check-in

Focus/Topic: Intersections of Economic and Reproductive Justice

All people, including people with less educational or economic resources, deserve access to the fullest range of pregnancy-related health care options, including abortion. The Hyde Amendment, which prohibits Medicare and other federal funding for abortion, explicitly targets low-income women and women of color to reduce their access to this critical medical service. It is not the role of politicians to make health care decisions for others; these choices should be made by an individual in consultation with her family, her doctor, and her faith.

1. Tell us about an important moment in your reproductive life. What was the impact of your economic or educational position on that event? How might have that experience been different had your economic or educational position been different?

2. What stereotypes do you have about people of a different economic or educational position than your own? Do you have stereotypes about their health care needs or sexualities?

3. What assumptions or cultural biases does your faith community make about its own members or others, with regard to their economic or educational background? What are the consequences of those ideas/practices?

4. How did you come into your current educational or economic position? Where did you acquire the values, skills, or expectations which accompany that status? Is the same true for others?

Likes & Wishes

Closing Words:

I.
What we call a beginning is often the end
and to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.

II.
We shall not cease from exploration
and the end of all our exploring
will be know arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time.